Microsoft's strategic shift into Google territory took another step forward today with the announcement that the software giant has signed a digitisation agreement with a digital scanning specialist, Kirtas Technologies.

The deal, which will enable Microsoft to forge ahead with its Live Book Search portal, indicates Microsoft's commitment to its move towards developing online and on-demand services and away from its traditional revenue drivers - the sale and licensing of software.

Its Live Book Search portal, to be launched early next year, will make available two strands of material: out-of-copyright scholarly material from educational establishments, and in-copyright books that are sent to Microsoft by publishers or authors and which are scanned by the company free of charge.

The former strand has proved the most successful for Microsoft so far. The libraries of the University of California and the University of Toronto (with 34m and 15m volumes respectively) signed up to the programme in June, and Cornell University Library announced a partnership with Microsoft this morning. The Cornell initiative will focus on works in the public domain and will allow free access to content to students and scholars all over the world.

Microsoft's agreement with Kirtas will significantly speed up the digitisation process. Kirtas has developed one of the fastest robotic scanners in the world - it allows for up to 2,400 pages to be digitally scanned and stored per hour - and guarantees an error rate lower than 1 per 10,000 pages.

"We are delighted by this partnership with Microsoft to free hundreds of years of knowledge held captive by exclusive library shelves. This is nothing less than the fulfillment of our founding mission to enable the moving of 560 years of backlog from books to bytes," said Dr Lotfi Belkhir, CEO and founder of Kirtas Technologies.

Microsoft is sidestepping the controversy which has engulfed Google's digitisation programme by limiting its own initiative to out-of-copyright material and in-copyright books where explicit permission has been given.

Last year Google announced plans to put online 15m volumes from four top US repositories - the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard Universities, and of the New York Public Library - and has been at the centre of a storm of protest over copyright issues ever since.

It is currently being sued by a US writers' group, the Authors Guild for copyright violation. The search engine has responded that all books published after 1922 are treated as in copyright and only short snippets of text from these books are displayed.